The Trumpet Call | Chapter 4

A Voice from the Center

Reconciliation, as this chapter teaches it, begins inside us: the scattered parts of the one Self must be gathered back into a single harmony before peace can flow outward into the world.

The Message of Reconciliation is one of the chapters of Το Σάλπισμα (The Trumpet Call), published in 1988. Like a trumpet sounding at dawn, the book is meant to wake us. This chapter does so in a particular way. It is not an essay about reconciliation. It is a voice that speaks directly to us, in the first person, and calls us home.

The voice opens with a single sentence that sets the tone for everything that follows: “From within the Center of Being, O Human, comes My Voice.” It is the voice of the Human–Word, the Divine Human, made active by the grace of the One and Only Word and attuned to the Absolute. It does not come from far away. It rises from “the infinite depths of Being,” and it is sent to every fragment of the human Wholeness, “to connect the disconnected parts and restore the contact and the flow of the energy of the Word” within each of them.

Again and again the voice addresses the reader with two words: Εαυτέ Μου, “My Self.” This tender form of address holds the whole teaching in seed. The one who speaks and the one who listens are not strangers. The listener is a part of the speaker’s own being, a part that has forgotten whom it belongs to. To read this chapter well, then, is not to study it from outside. It is to let ourselves be addressed, and to hear in that address the voice of our own deepest Self.

The Voice That Unites

The heart of the message is that humanity is one Wholeness, and the Voice of that Wholeness can hold every note within it and turn them all into one song.

The chapter speaks from what it calls “the timeless moment of Creation,” from the supreme instant when we existed “in all things as God in God.” In that original state we were whole, but passive. We rested in God without yet acting as God. The Voice now speaks to us from that same Source, “this Center of radiance and Love,” but with one decisive difference. It carries none of the old passivity. It speaks from a state of “intense and continuous activity.” What was once an unconscious unity is now meant to become a conscious, living, creative one.

Within this Voice, the text tells us, every part of the Self of Humanity is counted and vibrates: all the vibrations of every level and stage of evolution, and even “all the states of illusion.” Nothing is excluded. The Voice does not reject the confused, the fallen or the immature parts of us. It holds them.

And then comes the great affirmation: the voice of the Human Wholeness transmutes all of these within the Supra-essential Love and is able to express them unified. This is what the chapter means by reconciliation. It is not the silencing of the many voices, nor their replacement by one dominant voice. It is a transformation, a μετουσίωση, in which every sound finds its place in a single harmony.

The voice names its message in four ways, and each one deserves to be held in the heart:

• A Message of Unity: the many parts are one.
• A Message of the completion of the One Self: the Self is not whole until all its parts are gathered.
• A Message of Reconciliation of the separated parts: the soothing of the waves that clash against each other.
• A Message of activation: the departure from stagnation and inertia.

The last of these is easy to overlook. Reconciliation here is not a sweet, sleepy calm. It is an awakening. Peace, in this teaching, is the fruit of an intensely awake life, not a retreat from it.

The Illusion of the Separate Self

The Center of Being that speaks in this chapter lives within each of us too, but we do not let its unified Voice come through; we let only the noise of the personality speak.

This is one of the most searching passages in the chapter. “This Center of Being exists within you as well,” the voice says. “But you do not allow My Voice to come forth unified. Instead you isolate.” What we allow out instead are “the sounds of the personality, the sounds of disharmony, the sounds of conflicting waves.” These sounds spill out and cover the environment in which we live, and our whole earthly tabernacle, the body and its life.

The image is very precise. These sounds “pulse within you at so intense a rhythm” that they become the only ones we can hear. They carry us away. They do not let us listen to “the beats, the pulses, the vibration of the rest of your Self.” And so they isolate us further, “creating in you the illusion that you alone are a whole Self.”

Here lies the root error, the πλάνη, that the whole book works to expose. We think we are complete in ourselves. We imagine that the small self, with its opinions, wounds, likes and dislikes, is the whole of who we are. But it is only one fragment, and a loud one. Like a single instrument playing out of tune at full volume, it drowns out the orchestra and then believes it is the orchestra.

The chapter is honest about what follows. Even within the Voice that is meant to come forth unified, “confusion prevails.” It will go on prevailing until we ourselves, and every part of the Self of Humanity, desire to take an active part in the unity of the Voice of the Whole, and offer our own contribution of Blessing to the composition of Harmony and Union. Grace is offered freely, but union is never forced. It waits for our consent and our participation.

Listening Inward: the Wounded Parts of the Self

The first practical step of reconciliation is to listen: Αφουγκράσου, “Listen closely, My Self.”

The Greek verb is gentle and attentive. It means more than hearing. It is the listening of someone who bends close to catch a faint sound. The chapter repeats it like a refrain, and each time it points to something we usually refuse to hear.

We are asked to listen to the voices within us, “the voices of every hypostasis, every part of your Self that lies trampled, humiliated.” These parts are “chained” by judgments, by contempt, by the ambiguous feelings of non-love, by strong vibrations of disharmony. Most strikingly, they are chained by “the strong divisive disposition” that comes from “the part that you believe to be the whole Self.”

This is a painful and liberating insight. The very part of us that thinks it is in charge, the part that judges and rejects, is the one that keeps the other parts in chains. Whatever we despise in ourselves, or in others, we push out of the circle of love. And since all of humanity is one Self, the parts we push out are still ours.

The chapter asks us to listen to our true Wholeness, so that we may understand that it is “bound, pinned down, burdened by its own Self.” And it tells us how this binding goes on, day after day. Not mainly through great sins or dramatic failures, but through:

• daily friction,
• daily pettiness,
• daily careless thoughts,
• and even the most insignificant ripples that have not yet entered into Love.

These small ripples, the text says, have not been blessed by “the caress of Divine Grace.” So they keep cycling separation, when they should be leading to Union. The chapter then sets three things side by side, each one a pair of what is and what should be:

What we hear within	What it is meant to be
Clashing sounds	Harmony
Conflicting feelings	One Love
States of duality and division	Union

To listen in this way is to become aware of “the error of the part of the Wholeness of Humanity that you are,” and of our own “imperfect offering,” which adds to a disharmony that keeps circling through the universes. This is not an invitation to guilt. It is an invitation to see clearly, because what is seen can be healed.

From Awareness to Transmutation

Awareness alone is not the goal; the chapter asks us to become aware and then begin to transform, uniting the sounds of our “Being” into compositions of Harmony.

The instruction is threefold. We are to unite:

1. the sounds of our “Being” into compositions of Harmony,
2. our feelings into one endless Love,
3. our inner pulsations into Peace and Harmony.

Then comes a call to a vigilance that reaches into the finest details of life. “Watch over everything within you,” the voice says: the slightest movement of the mind and of the heart, the slightest movement of consciousness, the slightest pulse that goes out as energy from our Being, “from the molecules and the cells of your bodies.” Nothing is too small to matter, because every movement we make sends out a vibration into the whole.

The chapter is concrete about what to guard against. Do not allow the sending of judgments. Do not allow careless comments. Do not allow mockery or contempt “for any molecule of your self, for any part of your Whole.” This includes the parts of ourselves we dislike, and it includes other people, because they too are parts of the one Human Wholeness.

Then comes one of the strongest lines in the whole text: this mockery, this contempt, this careless sending of vibrations that do not belong to Love, are your very chains, your own pinning-down in matter and in illusion. We often imagine that our bondage comes from outside, from circumstances or from other people. The chapter turns the gaze around. The chains are forged by our own small acts of non-love. And so, at every moment, the key is also in our hands.

This is ancient Christian wisdom expressed in a new language. The Desert Fathers called it νήψις, watchfulness: the guarding of the heart, the noticing of every thought before it becomes a word or a deed. Here that watchfulness is given a cosmic scope. A careless thought is not merely a private matter. It is a note added to the music of the universe, in tune or out of tune.

No One Walks Alone

The chapter states plainly that we cannot advance alone, as a part cut off from the Wholeness; we reach the fullness of Truth only together, as one.

“You cannot advance alone, as a part cut off from the Wholeness,” the voice says. “And if you do advance, your steps will be few and unsteady.” Even those few steps have a purpose. They lead us to the knowledge that only “as Wholeness and Union” can we reach full identification, full Truth, and full absorption into the One and Only Word.

This is a gentle correction to every form of spiritual individualism. Many paths, ancient and modern, picture the seeker as a solitary climber, rising above others toward a private enlightenment. The Message of Reconciliation sees it differently. There is no private salvation, because there is no truly private self. My progress and yours are bound together. The one who is left behind is still part of me.

The second half of the chapter makes this a matter of responsibility. The voice inscribes in every part of Humanity the knowledge that responsibility for any part of the Self, for any error, spreads through the whole Human Being and weighs on the Human Wholeness. An error is never only “mine” or only “yours.” It burdens all.

This could sound heavy. In truth it is freeing. If every error weighs on all, then every act of love also blesses all. The chapter speaks of “the need for conscious work” to cover the errors, errors that burden not some separate unit but the Wholeness of Humanity. We are invited to cover every imperfection “with reserves of the Love of the Self,” and to fill every void “with sendings of the energy of Transmutation.” We become, in a sense, healers of the whole body of humanity, by the way we tend our own inner world.

Saint Paul expressed the same mystery when he wrote that “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26). The chapter extends this vision from the Church to the whole of humanity, and from the visible world to the vibrations of the soul.

The Blessing: Grace That Comes to Meet Us

The second half of the chapter turns from instruction to blessing: the Word itself steps forward to do in us what we cannot do alone.

The tone changes. Until now the voice has asked us to listen, to become aware, to watch. Now it speaks of what it does. “My Self, I activate within you… the Voice, the Timeless Voice, which has been within you since the moment of Creation.” It activates the Center of Being and of Life, and it synchronizes our pulses with the pulse of the One Word. Its purpose is that the inner processes of Transmutation, of Awakening and of “intense discernment” may take place within us, helping us to bring order, balance and unity into the Self, and to send waves of Love into all things.

The voice then reveals who is speaking: the Human–Word assimilated into the Absolute with the One and Only Divinity, “with the One and Only Word, Jesus Christ – Theotokos Mary.” From that place, it blesses “one by one” all its parts, pouring out Peace, Love and Unity. The verbs that follow are a litany of healing:

• I silence the separations and the clashing of vibrations.
• I pour the Peace of unity over the restless state that prevails.
• I create bonds of union, communication and the circulation of Divine Love between the parts of the Self.
• I raise the Human Being, in the Name of the One Word, above the garments of illusion and the outer forms.
• I reactivate the timeless bonds of Love and the unchanging bonds of Light and Unity.
• I inscribe in every part the Knowledge that only as a Whole will humanity walk the path of Perfection.

The goal of this path is named without hesitation: Θέωση, theosis, deification. This is the great hope of the Eastern Christian tradition, that the human being is called to become “by grace what God is by nature.” The chapter gives it a creative and joyful form. Humanity, once whole, will be assimilated into the All, and will create “as an active God within the Divinity” New Harmonies, New Beauty, New Perfection.

The blessing is sealed in a Trinitarian way, “through the Blessing of the Word, through the Fatherly Blessing, through the eternal circulation of the Holy Spirit.” The path of return is confirmed. And Grace is placed, abundantly, right beside the human being: as Presence, as waves of energy, as Holy Spirit.

The final line is perhaps the most moving of all. The Word places Itself at the service of the Human Being, to offer the help that the inactive Human–Word needs, so that it may become a Word–Human full of energy, assimilated into the Absolute. The Divine does not stand above us waiting to judge. It kneels beside us to serve, as Christ knelt to wash the feet of His disciples.

Living the Message

The message becomes real only when it changes how we meet the next thought, the next feeling and the next person.

These reflections grow out of the chapter’s own words. They are offered as a path to walk, not as rules to obey.

1. Begin with stillness. Before the day starts, sit quietly and listen for the Center of Being within you. You need not hear words. It is enough to turn toward it, and to let the louder voices of the personality settle.
2. Name the clashing sounds. When you feel anger, irritation or contempt, pause and say inwardly: “This is a clashing sound that is meant to be Harmony.” Naming it loosens its grip.
3. Listen to the trampled parts. Ask gently: What part of me am I rejecting today? What part of another am I refusing to love? Let that part speak, without judgment.
4. Guard the small things. Watch especially the careless comment, the passing mockery, the inner sneer. The chapter teaches that these small ripples are our very chains. Each one you refuse to send out is a link broken.
5. Cover with love, fill with light. When you notice a fault in yourself or in someone else, do not add judgment to it. Cover it, as the chapter says, with “reserves of Love,” and fill the gap with a blessing.
6. Remember the Whole. When you pray, pray as a part of humanity, not apart from it. Your progress and your neighbor’s are one progress.
7. Receive the blessing. End the day by letting the blessing of the chapter be spoken over you: “I bless, one by one, all the points of My Being, and I silence the separations.” Let Grace do what effort alone cannot.

A simple prayer, drawn from the spirit of the chapter, can accompany this practice:

Lord, Word of the Father, let Your timeless Voice rise within me. Silence in me the sounds of separation. Gather every scattered part of me, and of all humanity, into Your one Love. Make me a note in Your Harmony, and a servant of Your Peace. Amen.

The Trumpet Still Sounds

The Message of Reconciliation is, in the end, a message of homecoming: every part of us, and every person, is called back into the one Voice from which we came.

We live in a time of loud and clashing voices, in public life and in private hearts. It is easy to believe that peace will come when the others change, when the right side wins, or when circumstances finally settle. This chapter offers another way. Peace begins where the separation begins: within. It begins when we stop letting the noise of the small self drown out the music of the whole, and when we refuse, moment by moment, to send judgment, contempt and mockery into the world.

Yet the chapter never leaves us alone with this task. Its last word is not a demand but a gift. The Word sets Itself at our service. Grace stands abundantly beside us, as Presence, as Holy Spirit. What we cannot complete by effort, Love completes in us, if only we consent and take part. The trumpet of this book still sounds. It calls each of us to awaken from inertia, to listen to the trampled parts of our being, to gather them gently into Love, and so to become, together, what we were from the beginning: one Humanity, one Voice, singing within God New Harmonies, New Beauty, New Perfection.